Low-cost VT-free 65nm Pentium Ds to ship Q3?

Intel appears to be preparing to release a second low-end Pentium D 9xx processor next quarter, in addition to the anticipated 925 chip that turned up on company roadmaps earlier this year. The two desktop dual-core processors lack support for Intel's Virtualisation Technology (VT).

The 925 and 915 are clocked at 3.0GHz and 2.8GHz, respectively. Both contain twin 2MB L2 caches, run over an 800MHz frontside bus and support 64-bit addressing. In addition to VT, they don't feature Enhanced SpeedStep - both technologies are present in higher-end 9xx-class Pentium Ds.

The 925 surfaced earlier this year in leaked pricing information relating to the CPUs Intel is expected to launch in Q3, including its 'Conroe' next-generation desktop processor. The 925 is reported to ship at the same time and cost $178.

The 915 turned up on a post by Chinese-language website HKEPC this week. While the price isn't yet known, $178 is typically Intel's base Pentium price, so the 915 is likely to cost the same as the 925. ®